Fast setup a tank for emergency with no preparation

[The endler guy]

some people may know what’s going on,  other won’t so I’ll give a brief rundown 

I got more fish recently (a female Bolivian ram and some neon tetras) and the neons started dying off, along with male endlers and ember tetras. This morning I found spooky (my male Bolivian ram) with a tiger endler in his mouth. I am getting medication and a fry/ timeout net to put him in to see what is killing the fish

 

with the background out of the way, if it is spooky, I’ll need to move him to a new tank (luckily I have a 20 high sitting in my closet) but no established substrate or filter.

 

so how can I sadly setup an other tank quickly, with the caveat of it may not be him, so I won’t necessarily need it. Is there anyway to be able to sadly throw together a tank with an unestablished filter and substrate for him to sift?

[beastie]

If i need a quick tank and have nothing cycled, i put fresh water, wait for it to temp equalize or put heater in and throw in some plants like duckweed or hornwort...and then do daily changes, not 50% but like 20%.

This i think is enough for a one fish with low bioload. For bolivian ram some sand but like mm high, not 2 cm substrate height should be ok.

 

Also please stop scaring me, i have five bolivian rams, ember tetras, yellow tiger and many other fish you have and do not want to hear about killing sprees 🙂 fingers crossed 

[The endler guy]

On 6/3/2023 at 2:19 PM, beastie said:

If i need a quick tank and have nothing cycled, i put fresh water, wait for it to temp equalize or put heater in and throw in some plants like duckweed or hornwort...and then do daily changes, not 50% but like 20%.

This i think is enough for a one fish with low bioload. For bolivian ram some sand but like mm high, not 2 cm substrate height should be ok.

 

Also please stop scaring me, i have five bolivian rams, ember tetras, yellow tiger and many other fish you have and do not want to hear about killing sprees 🙂 fingers crossed 

Yay I’m pretty sure it is not him anymore, I found a female endler (about mid sized, not fully grown but MUCH larger than a male) dead with half of the color faded so I am almost certain I’m dealing with pathogens 

[beastie]

Sorry to hear that. Best option, without randomly throwing medicine in, which is never a good idea, i would do daily 50% water changes ideally with gravel vac every other day.

Also i saw someone advised salt the tank. While i would treat sick fish in a salt bath i wouldn't salt the whole tank, because it wreaks utter havoc with plants and that leads to worse tank conditions later on 

[Odd Duck]

It sounds like this is a moot point now, but putting a single ram into a 20 gallon you may not need to do much water changing with such a low bioload.  Test daily and water change as needed.  If you can squeeze out some mulm into the new tank, especially near the filter uptake (or next to a sponge filter) that seeds filters very well and give you a jumpstart on cycling.

As far as your deaths it’s very hard to say what might be happening.  Guppies like salt and it shouldn’t affect any but maybe the most sensitive plants if you add only 1 tablespoon per 10 gallons and that can help stabilize the fish.  Many plants will tolerate 1 tablespoon per 5 gallons.  More than that can start to affect more plants.  There is some info that certain bottled bacteria may benefit the fish immune system.  The studies aren’t as solid as hoped for but there are some older studies out there and some new studies underway.  It’s worth trying some bottled bacteria and would speed cycling of any new tank.

If you can determine anything further - white or red spots, red gills, pineconing, any abnormal behavior, etc, tell us parameters, etc.